Various food-product slicers are available in the marketplace for slicing an assortment of food-products. One general type of food-product slicer is the type in which the food-product is thrust into a set of blades that slice the product into multiple slices, and this type of food-product slicer generally falls into one or the other of two categories, soft-food-product slicers and hard-food-product slicers. Examples of soft food-products (at room temperature) include ripe tomatoes and cheeses that can be characterized as rubbery, such as mozzarella cheese. Examples of hard food-products (again, at room temperature) include onions, apples, and carrots. Conventional soft- and hard-product slicers typically cannot adequately handle the opposite type of product, i.e., typical conventional soft-product slicers cannot handle hard products, and typical conventional hard-product slicers cannot handle soft products.
Conventional soft-product mechanical slicers are often horizontally actuated slicers in which the product being sliced is thrust into a set of vertically spaced blades that are aligned vertically with one another using a pusher assembly that includes a pusher head having a plurality of horizontal vertically-spaced plates spaced apart to move between the horizontal blades. The horizontal blades are usually skewed relative to the thrust axis of the pusher assembly and, therefore, are relatively long.
Typical conventional hard-product mechanical slicers (which more precisely work by cleaving action) are often generally vertically actuated devices in which the product being cut is thrust into a set of spaced blades along a thrust axis that is perpendicular to a plane containing the blade edges on any blade level. This results in a cleaving action. Mechanical hard-product slicers use a pusher assembly that includes a pusher head having a plurality of horizontally-spaced plates spaced apart to move between the vertical blades.